CHAPTER 1. PLATO AND THE FATHERS. A study which is to treat of a phase of English thought not indigenous alone to the British Isle, nor even restricted to one historic period, may fittingly seek, for preliminary exposition, a meaning in the word Puritan broader in its connotation than that assigned it by history. Puritanism in essence is the effort to rid life, or some phase of it, of the evils that have enwrapped it. It matters not whether it be to free a religion of forms that seem to impede the soul in its worship, or whether it be to wipe away the stains of social life. That is Puritanism, whatever variations it may assume at different times and at different places, which seeks to obtain the fullest possible conception of the divine idea in the world, and to make that idea rule. The following of the divine plan in the ordering of thought and of conduct may be done consciously or unconsciously. It may even be found silently leavening the teachings of great pagans like Plato. And like all human endeavors it may, and usually does, take on a sectarian view, and bind its followers to a narrow ideal of life, and even to intolerant judgment of their fellows. This shriveled manifestation of the spirit of Puritanism must be considered in any treatment of the subject, but it must not be regarded as the true spirit. In opposing false beauty and license, it may inspire in its adherents a distrust and even abhorrence of the finer, though abused, feelings of the soul, yet this is only the accidental result, not the life-purpose of Puritanism. For it brings no necessary break with true beauty and freedom; and those lofty natures who, though steadfast to their faith, nourished a love for art, are more truly Puritans than the type of gloomy ascetics usually classed under that name. These higher men are found in all ages and in all stations of life; Plato was of them, and the æsthetic, beauty-wor shipping Spenser, the Roundhead poet and statesman Milton, the royalist Sidney, and the churchman Herbert; and wherever they appear they should stand for what they are— in the highest and noblest sense Puritans. The study of the Puritan attitude toward the stage should follow these broad lines. But limitation, it is needless to say, is necessary. We are not here to quarrel with terms defined strictly by history, or to force under one standard men actually affiliated under another. We expect to restrict our study in point of time and space to the real historical era of Puritanism; but we hope not to restrict it in spirit. So when we shall find that men, not only in olden times but even in England itself, in no wise connected with the reformers of the 16th and 17th centuries, stood with them in their opposition to theatrical exhibitions, their influence should not be entirely excluded from consideration. If this broader horizon is kept clearly in sight, restriction in other ways will be no hindrance. By so grasping the real truth and purpose of the movement as it manifested itself in the narrow field of England, and even there as centered in the one city, London, within the few years closing the 16th and opening the 17th centuries, the principle of all similar movements against the stage will be realized. How could it be otherwise? English Puritanism was no radical, arbitrary revolution, the outbreak of fanaticism; it was a deepening and broadening by natural and steady growth of the nation's moral nature, begun in those first struggles against the clerical abuses of pre-Reformation times, and continued with no interruption till the second half of the 17th century. In essentials, therefore, it must have been similar to other spiritual awakenings fostered under like conditions; it must have contained the energizing force of all. Our idea, therefore, is to trace the warfare carried on by the English Puritans from the time when their opposition first assumed prominence in the middle of the 16th century till their temporary victory was won in 1642. Yet that the accidental and peculiar aspects of this movement may be separated from the fundamental principles involved, we may well look at two earlier periods when dignified, well-meaning and well-grounded opposition to the dramatic art grew to be a vital issue, by comparison and contrast with which the English movement will appear in a new and clearer light. In the earlier of the periods to which we accordingly invite attention, it was the art of Greece that was attacked. Hellenic culture, in spite of its fostering of high intellectualism and artistic susceptibility, did little to strengthen man's moral nature, and in the end its art sank from glory to utter degradation. Wise men among the people saw the inherent insufficiency of their religion, and dimly, the end to which art was guiding them. Xenophanes, about 538 B.C., pierced the fallacy of polytheism, and censured Homer for this, as well as for his stories of the Olympian deities; and his pupil, Heracleitus, thought that Homer and the other poets should have been "whipped out of the state with rods." This feeling reached its culmination a century later in the poet-philosopher Plato. In ancient Athens poetry was given the place held to-day both by religion and education; and by the founder of an ideal commonwealth the propriety of this system had to be considered. Hence Plato was led to the attack. He believed that poetry failed signally as a fit training for youth. By arousing artificially sympathy and emotion that should respond only to genuine grief, it weakened human character. Passions thus awakened, whether of grief at tragedy or mirth at comedy, he believed gradually altered and lowered character to a simulated being unworthy of true manhood. The moral objection lay still deeper. Poets, even the greatest of them, had taught that might made right, and had invented slanderous fictions about the gods, and by their stories of Hades had brought men to fear even an honorable death. Thus poetry at its best had been in Greece a bane to youth, and hence to the state-especially tragic poetry with its call for a complete surrender of individuality to imitation. Indeed, since all imitative art is twice removed from truth-being but an imitation of something in itself only a faulty copy of God's original and true idea-its innate falsity, in Plato's mind, was sufficient to ruin human understanding and to blind it to the truth. No more extreme position against art could well be taken. Plato, to be sure, recognized various degrees of the corrupting influence. Homer, from whom he illustrated all his objections, seemed less objectionable than the untruthful versifiers of his own time. But on the whole he did not oppose high to low art; rather he classed both together to contrast with philosophy, which, instead of describing superficially the mere aspect of things, sought the real principles underlying external phenomena. This was the basis of his quarrel. Yet Sidney in his Defense of Poetry asserted that Plato spoke of the abuse, not the use, of art, assailed only "those wrong opinions of the Deity," and in the Ion gave "high and rightly divine commendation unto poetry." Although in that work Plato's praise was half ironical, other passages show that Sidney was not wholly astray from the truth. In the Republic, Plato said that if dramatists must represent man's actions, at least let them hasten over the necessary evil in dialogue, and so leave the action free for the portrayal of the good. Again, he said that the only fitting themes for poetry were religion and patriotism—a seeming admission that poetry could be rightly used.1 In fact, Plato did conceive of an artistic form so perfect that it raised itself from falsity to truth in becoming the sincere voice of the inner life.2 One sees, therefore, that it was only Plato's great moral nature, awakened to consciousness of the evil, that finally triumphed over his poetic instincts and led him to banish poetry from his ideal state. 3 Strange Plato's ideas now seem; yet he did not stand alone. Plutarch accepted them, at least in part, and in the late Middle Ages Agrippa could say: "And thus 1 Republic, III, 79-83; Laws, V, 210-11. 2 Republic, III, sect. 401-2. 3 See chapter 15, p. 173. the best and wisest of men have always despised poesy as the parent of lies." If such doubts were inspired in pagans by the evils of poetry, especially of the drama, it is not surprising that the leaders of the early Christian church should have headed a crusade similar in many respects to Plato's, though more evangelistic in aim. Their standpoint followed naturally from their belief. At the rise of Christianity art had sunk to its lowest in Hellas, and was working the ruin which Plato had foreseen; while in Rome the brutality of the gladiatorial combats, and the extreme realism of barbarity and lust presented on the stage, forced a natural revolt in every human heart. For sunk though the people were in morals, and fond as they were of these scenes of vice, enough sense of good was left in them at least to realize the evil. Men like Horace, Propertius and even Ovid saw clearly the loathsomeness of the spectacles. Yet being destitute of Christian inspiration, they made few attempts to remedy the evil, or uplift the actors. The furthest that an emperor even of Marcus Aurelius temperament dared go against the games was to lessen the salaries of the actors;2 and what restrictive laws were passed, in the face of a universal passion, did little to lessen the great influence undermining the state. It was left for the Christian church to assume the true Puritan attitude-an utter condemnation of plays, and scorn for the players, together with an earnest attempt to uproot the evil, and to raise the actors from their social degradation. The attitude of the ante-Nicene church may be regarded in many ways as a re-echo or survival of Plato's spirit. In the second century Tatian described the actor as a man who "is one thing internally, but outwardly counterfeits what he is not. 993 And at approximately the same time, Tertullian, with his treatise De Spectaculis really leading the attack against the Roman games, spoke at greater length to the same effect. "The Author of truth," he said, "hates 1 Vanity of Sciences, chapter 4. 2 Schmidt, p. 430. 3 Address to the Greeks, p. 28. |